Whale Tales

Before the discovery of gold, Otago’s wealth came from ‘black oil’ that was harvested from southern right whales.   All species of whales were regarded as fair game, but female right whales and their calves were (once) numerous and migrated in a predictable annual manner up the inshore waters of New Zealand’s east coast.                                                             The industry was lucrative.  In 1838, the year that Johnny Jones purchased the Waikouaiti whaling station, his men captured forty one whales, generating profits that repaid Jones’s investment twenty times over.  This level of productivity was never repeated; indiscriminate slaughter rapidly depleted breeding stock and whale numbers fell precipitously and predictably.                                                                                                                                                   In 1840, when Jones’s “steady farming families” arrived on the brig Magnet, approximately 28 whales were landed but by 1841 that number had fallen to nine and in 1842 only four whales were captured. But Jones was tenacious and had other income streams - his station remained open for eleven years, finally closing in 1849.                              

The Magnet’s first port of call after leaving Sydney was Bluff – where another of Jones’s whaling stations was located. Having experienced the sights, sounds and smells of the Bluff shore based whaling operation, the settlers must have been somewhat forewarned about the conditions they could expect to encounter at Waikouaiti.

Huriawa Peninsula, Karitane, the location of the Waikouaiti Whaling Station

In 1844 a surveyor travelling south described Waikouaiti as being typical of other whaling stations, “a picture of the most perfect neglect of anything like order or neatness.” He describes the smell: (“like a thousand filthy lamps”) and the sights (“the whole beach was strewn with gigantic fragments of the bones of whales”).  The wildlife was also depicted: (prowling, “savage looking pigs and an abundance of poultry”) as were the inhabitants (“dirty, half-dressed Native women with a proportionate number of half-cast children”). Unsurprisingly, Johnny Jones and his ‘steady farming families’ established their agricultural settlement at the opposite end of Waikouaiti bay.  The settlements resident missionary however, chose to live adjacent to the whaling station, its proximity allowing him to better attend to “the spiritual welfare of the aboriginal inhabitants” and to witness the distressing consequences of the whalers excessive drinking.      

                                                                                        

Whaling was a seasonal activity carried out during winter months, and as few whalers were disciplined enough to save their winter wages,  during warmer weather they were obliged to earn a living by fishing, farming or by any other means possible. When whale numbers and winter wages diminished, men who were highly skilled or adventurous signed onto American whaling ships and left New Zealand, while those who chose not to abandon their families stayed and took up alternative trades. Businesses that had provisioned foreign whaling vessels suffered. In 1851 an article in the Otago Witness rather pointlessly urged the Honolulu based newspaper the ‘Friend’ to recommend the port of Otago as a whaling destination, but the whaling ships had gone and never returned. The industry had irrevocably collapsed, but the remains of hundreds of dead whales that were the remnants of the trade remained evident for years.                                                                                                             

During the 1860’s gold rush, Waikouaiti was an important stopover point for prospectors.  In 1862 a special correspondent for the Otago Daily Times found ample evidence that Waikouaiti had originally been a whaling station.  On his arrival he was ferried ashore in whaleboats “owned and worked by a party of Maoris” and saw huge bones “strewn on the shore with here and there a portion of the spine or backbone of the whale of the thickness of the nave of a cartwheel.”                                                                                                                                

However, even discarded whale bones were considered to have some aesthetic or economic use.  Fyffe house, the oldest remaining dwelling in Kaikoura has foundations made from whale vertebrae and whalebones were even occasionally fashioned into furniture.                                      The bones littering Waikouaiti beach were carried off and used as garden ornaments (rib bone arches were popular), while others were collected (ground up?) and made into farm manure. In 1901 a correspondent to the Otago Witness wrote an ‘amusing account’ of the collection of whale bones on Waikouaiti beach.   It begins: “a man came down to the beach for a load of bones.” Having loaded his cart, he encounters a Maori who glances into the cart and notices that “there were more bones than belonged to whales.” Erosion had exposed ancient human remains that had been loaded onto the cart and mingled with the whale bones.  An argument ensued, but eventually the bones were sorted and the men parted company - each carrying bones intended for a different purpose.                                                                                                                                

Early in the 1870’s whales were once again sighted and attempts were made to revive the old industry.  Local Maori formed a cooperative and the Waikouaiti Whale Fishery Company was established.   Old whale boats were pressed into service and the company met with some initial success; in 1871 two whales were landed and numerous more were sighted – “the coast in places has been black with the monsters” (an exaggeration by the Otago Daily Times, July 1872).  Two new whale boats were commissioned and five or six whales were landed however the following season was disastrous.  In 1874 the whaling crews (having just returned from their seasonal work as shearers) landed a single seven ‘tun’ whale.  Its estimated value of £300 was reportedly “just sufficient to clear the crews expenses for tucker during the season.  The Whale Fishery Company’s shears and try pots rusted on the Karitane peninsula until the early 1900’s. Inoperable whaling boats moldered under a boatshed at Karitane until a single boat ‘Maori Girl’ was rescued and restored in the 1930’s.  It can be seen today in the Otago Settler’s Museum.                                                                                                                                                                                                                In the years that followed, whales were occasionally sighted but the equipment and expertise needed to capture, kill and process them had been lost.  In 1904 two fishermen named Challis and Clifford discovered the carcass of a right whale floating off the Waikouaiti coast.  After fastening it with ropes they set off towing the carcass to the nearest suitable harbour but soon discovered that “the little ten horsepower engine could hardly shift the great inert mass” It took them twelve hours to reach Moeraki- a distance of ten miles.  By 1904 whales (even dead ones) had become a tremendous curiosity.  Even though the animal’s death had not been recent (its smell was described as hardly resembling the “spices of Araby”) crowds of sightseers thronged the beach “wondering at its vast bulk and mighty flukes and speculating as to its probable value.” A few adventurous souls even climbed aboard and wandered around on top of the carcass.  Challis and Clifford were reportedly paid £20 for their catch which had to be carted away to a freezing works for processing.                                                                                                                                                  

In 1931 New Zealand became a signatory to an international convention designed to protect various whale species.  Prime Minister Forbes announced penalties and explained that the bill was an attempt to prevent wholesale slaughter and extinction.  He went on to add that although the extinction of the right whales was a thing to be deplored it would be difficult for New Zealand to regulate the taking of whales in the Antarctic and that it was yet to be determined whether the legislation would prove to be effective.   

How ‘right’ he was.